[Illustration: THE NEW BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.] The board walk that runs diagonally from Seventy Seventh Street and Central Park to Eighty First Street and Columbus Avenue—the two points at which visitors usually approach the museum—passes, midway, the present entrance, whose unpretentious aspect is a most decided contrast to the solid magnificence of the newly finished front. It leads directly to the first great hall, on the ground floor, which is mainly occupied by the Jesup collection of American woods. This is an assemblage of specimens of trees indigenous to North America, wonderfully complete and well arranged. Each is cut so as to display the bark and the polished and unpolished timber, with a colored map that shows at a glance the geographical distribution of the species. In most instances an entire section of the trunk is exhibited, and on the west side of the hall there are two colossal specimens, worthy to serve as round tables for King Arthur, which may prompt the unobservant visitor to exclaim, “Those must be the Big Trees of California!” Such is not the case, though both of them hail from the Pacific coast, being respectively the Yellow and the Sugar Pine. A specimen of the _Sequoia gigantea_ is in an adjoining case, where it attracts less attention because it is but a comparatively small fragment of the trunk of one of those famous monarchs of the vegetable kingdom. In the same hall, in cases that stand along the center of the room and in the window alcoves, are some bird groups that receive a plentiful share of admiration. They deserve it, for as specimens of accurate and artistic taxidermy they have rarely been equaled and never excelled. They reproduce feathered life and its surroundings with a fidelity that bespeaks thorough knowledge, remarkable skill, and almost infinite patience. There are birds in every attitude—perching, swimming, walking, and even flying—each in a setting that very picturesquely shows its habitation and habits. The uninitiated visitor can hardly persuade himself that the foliage, the herbage, and the flowers that he sees through the glass can be the imperishable product of an artificer’s ingenuity, and not the work of nature herself. Some of the best of the groups are the robins, with their nest among the pink blossomed apple boughs; the grebes, swimming in a happy family upon a glassy imitation of water; the laughing gulls with their nest in the bent grass; the Louisiana water thrush, domiciled under an overhanging bank; the cat birds, the clapper rails, and the ruffed grouse, these last so life-like that the visitor can almost fancy he hears the brown leaves rustle beneath the feet of the chickens. Great credit is due to Jenness Richardson, the museum’s chief taxidermist, and Mrs. E. S. Mogridge, who jointly prepared this beautiful series of exhibits. [Illustration: THE BELLA BELLA INDIAN WAR CANOE.]